Peeking

Overlooking the bay, she had a clear view over a relatively unpolluted cityscape: normally, the irksome residents, clamoring in and out of busses, picking up raggedy tabloids, and staring at their mobile phones, would get in her view.  Now that stay-at-home orders were in force, though, it was easier to enjoy the early-morning arrests.  Like clockwork, the finest of their profession, instructed by those in the know of the list, would descend just after sunrise to knock on a door and check off another name.

 

They must have known about the list: why were they so passive?  One got the impression that they had always made sure to shower and change their underwear before being carted off on charges.  How irksome the need for charges could be.  How irksome that they looked so good for television reporters who must have known about the list.  Nonetheless, pesky colonial-era laws had turned out to be quite useful in effecting a pervasive calm.  The hooligans had become her lap dogs drooling over her new edicts and her seemingly overarching power.

 

Of course, she knew she had no power.  Even when she had thought she had, she had failed to act upon it.  But what pleasure now to be witness!  What jouissance to be held in contempt for decisions she had no power to make!   Whereas before, her perceived lack of action had caused the polluted hordes to hate her, her perceived actions created, as of late, an aura of power, legitimatized by the disgust indirectly directed in her direction.

 

Those daft enough to direct their disgust directly would have to plan pre-dawn showers and don clean undies.  Not that she was to blame.  Or had been for that matter.  At first, digging back into a course on feminist perspectives, she was, of course, disgruntled by her lack of power: at first, she had been tempted to steer the course of events, but without a sturdy mule, she could do nothing.  The men still held the reins.

 

It was when the men of the imperial powers first laid sanctions that she understood her real sense of power: she had known that her salary was higher than even that of the president, that her salary was even higher than those of the presidents of the empires.  Digitally, the numbers had no meaning.  Once that salary arrived in cash, after the pitifully-paid pro-imperial presidents had sanctioned her, she could touch and smell the power of her powerlessness.

 

The piles of cash could, though, obstruct her view of the apprehension of the polluted residents, but that was how she realized how much she was actually paid to direct indirectly.  Or was it directly in-direct?  Her once-firm grip on grammar, it was true, grappled with its grasp once hard-currency coffee had become more difficult to obtain.  But with little to do other than brush aside her stash, a bundle of fogginess in her perch changed little, if nothing at all.

 

Surely, she chose to watch, for it was in her power to do so.  And it was one of the few pleasures of being perched on the peak.  Power, real power, powerless reality.  Hmmm.  It was thus that she took power into her hands: she dusted off the rusty field glasses left by the imperial invaders and delighted in the apprehension of her minions.

 

The office workers, the bureaucrats, the rabble on the streets would have got in her way.  With her field glasses, she would get a clearer picture.  The day would get out of her way.  The day, then, did get out of her way.  The field glasses caught the faintly glimmering flicker in the fading light of day and the fading noise of her minions.

 

The neon light beckoned her power to earn a few bills on her own terms.  The president might be there, and he liked a lap dance.  And sashaying through the roadblocked streets, those measly bills with their measly meaning would mean so much more.  Like clockwork, the neon beckoned, and there was time to dance until the sun peeked over the peak once more.